A very real humanoid robot

The european humanoid robot research project called Eccerobot, which stands for “Embodied Cognition in a Compliantly Engineered Robot” aims to mimic the human anatomy in a humanoid robot more than any of its kind before. The project is run by University of Munich and has several European partners and supporters.

By making a design that mimics human body, which is called a “Anthropomimetic” design, a better way of researching human cognition and artificial intelligence can be achieved as well. After all, human cognition and thinkig is very closely related with the body’s senses and the input coming from the whole body. Robotics is not necessarily bound by the limits of biology, however mimicking the human body in a robot is still helpful in order to identify, understand and solve various problems in robotics. Humanlike design naturally enables an easy interaction with the enviroment and provides the robot with a very high degree of freedom (D.O.F.).

The Eccerobot, not only mimics the appearance, but also the inner working structure of human body as well. The muscles, tendons and bones are made as close as possible to the real human body.

The robot is still in development. Once completed, or more developed, it may not only provide useful insight to studying AI, but may find medical applications as well. The biggest current challenges are control problems, as sometimes even a simple movement of a shoulder requires the actuation of many different muscles. See video below.

For more on the project, visit Eccerobot site here.

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